CLC President Details Plans for the New Millennium In my new position as President of the Convention Liaison Council (CLC), I have the opportunity to work with many of the hospitality industry's leaders to chart an exciting course of change and improvements for this industry. While the opportunity for significant advancement lies before the CLC, my first task will be to discern ‘how’ the member organizations want CLC to evolve. With so many member organizations representing so many different areas of this industry, it will be impossible to navigate the seas of change without occasionally sailing into some organization's ‘territorial waters’. Our success will depend to a certain extent upon the cooperation from those organizations where we might overlap. To the extent that we can all pull together, the CLC offers the chance to improve the industry for all parties. All things considered, here are some projects with “hot” potential in the new millennium: The APEX Initiative The APEX (short for Accepted Practices for Excellence Exchange) mission is an industry-wide initiative to develop and implement accepted practices, which create and enhance efficiencies throughout the meetings industry. Some objectives of the APEX Initiative include: Remove inefficiencies throughout the industry through the elimination of waste and duplication of effort, equating to cost savings for suppliers and planners Embrace technology by successfully capturing, storing, transmitting, and sharing data Enhance speed and quality of service Provide an environment for more effective planning and execution of meetings and conventions Some suggested strategies to achieve these goals are to utilize the CLC website as a mechanism to provide progress reports to all CLC member organizations and their memberships; list accepted practices online, and provide a forum for input from all stakeholders. This feedback would then go to the subcommittees or industry panels for consideration. Legal counsel will ensure antitrust compliance. The participants in the initiative process need to understand at the outset that the purpose of the program is to develop recommended, not mandatory compliance, illustrative of the best practices in the industry. Economic Impact We also want to get moving on a Y2K update of the CLC Economic Impact Study, last conducted in the mid ‘90s. This is at the top of a list of activities the members feel CLC should be doing. In addition to putting some hard numbers together on the national and international scale, we must develop a legitimate, verifiable, and honest template for local cities and regions to use in measuring the economic impact of the meeting, convention, and exposition industry. CMP Program While the CMP Program will grow to over 6,000 credentialed meeting professionals in the year 2000, we have barely scratched the surface of its potential. My goal is for the CMP Program to be the model other associations look to for leadership, effectiveness, and ease of operation. We see the day, in the not-too-distant future, when an applicant can take the CMP exam when they want, where they want, at any time. The exam won't be any easier, only the process to get to it, and to take it. We also want to make sure the exam itself is current and the questions have only one right answer. Web I see the World Wide Web as a land of opportunity for CLC. We plan to update the website early in 2000 and keep it fresh on a regular basis. Content improvements include the APEX forum and an interactive CMP listing. We want to make our site the first site to visit when someone wants to learn more about organizations of meeting planners, meeting facilities, meeting sites, etc. Other Things on Our Agenda for 2000 In addition to the above, we plan to accomplish the following ongoing programs: Update the CLC Manual with the 7th Edition Host a successful Hall of Leaders Gala Dinner and Induction Ceremony in Washington, DC Host a successful CLC Forum on the day after the Hall of Leaders Dinner in Washington Execute an aggressive public relations program for CLC and the CMP Program. Begin to create a CLC “brand” While I understand this is an aggressive list of things to accomplish, we look forward to the challenge of meeting all these goals in 2000. Working with all our CLC member organizations and leading convention industry partners like Conferon, we should make improvements that will positively impact this industry for many years to come. Contact CLC at: 30400 Detroit Road, Suite 106 Cleveland, Ohio 44145 gdistelhorst@clc-online.org Garis Distelhorst, CAE President - Convention Liaison Council